Proxmox = "THE" universal Linux VM and ZFS storageserver

[gea]

I increasingly have the impression that Proxmox is becoming THE Linux universal server

• Current, very well maintained kernel with Debian as basis
• very good virtualization capabilities
• well-maintained ZFS
  
  This paves the way for Proxmox as a universal Linux server not only for any services as a VM but also as a barebone storage server with ZFS. I see a storage VM under Proxmox as obsolete if you only use it to share datasets via a SAMBA server that is identical to Proxmox own SAMBA. The main reasons for a storage VM currently remain the limited ZFS management functions in Proxmox or an Illumos/Solaris VM because it allows SMB shares with Windows ntfs ACL (NFSv4) without the smb.conf masochism - zfs set sharesmb=on and everything is good.
  
  If the ZFS management options in Proxmox are currently not enough for you, you can test my napp-it cs under Proxmox. Management is then carried out via a web GUI that can easily be downloaded and started under Windows. Under Proxmox you install the associated management service with
  
  wget -O - www.napp-it.org/nappitcs | perl
  (current status: beta, free for noncommercial use)

 

[BeTeP]

I have been using Proxmox VE as my preferred general server use Linux distro since v3.4 release in 2015. Basically I was treating it as Debian with ZFS.

 

[CyklonDX]

Debian

that's the bad part no1.
I hate dealing with their dev's... "vi is bugged, and doesn't work right? just use nano already you dummy"

very good virtualization capabilities

bad part no2, (maybe even worse than 1st, lack of standardized kvm configuration, because of that lot of kvm configuration features are hidden or not available)

well-maintained ZFS

meh part; most often not up-to-date, and often creates really odd pools. Not saying they are wrong, its just odd.

 

[gea]

All in One MK II

Around 15 years ago, I came up with the All in One Idea (VM Server with a virtualized ZFS storage server). From the ....NAS forum, I got remarks that this is stupid and cannot work. Now AiO configurations are quite common, https://hardforum.com/threads/opens...nios-openindiana-solaris-and-napp-it.1573272/

Today you can still use this concept ex if you want a special feature from a storge VM (web-gui or the much easier Solaris/Illumos kernelbased SMB server instead SAMBA). But for many use cases, Proxmox already offers exact the right feature mix - beside ZFS management that is nearly not there.

You can now combine a ZFS storage manaement gui and the Proxmox gui for VM management ex
(Proxmox does not want to run in a frame, open it in a tab)



@CyklonDX
Which other Linux distribution would you prefer as a out of the box general use Linux for virtualisation and ZFS storage?

 

[CyklonDX]

Which other Linux distribution would you prefer as a out of the box general use Linux for virtualisation and ZFS storage?

I'd want to use rhel, or suse flavors. (they have install presets for kvm's, while rhel you may have to do your own install of zfs - suse includes it with managment ui's on dockers/kube using rancher and such)
(truenas is getting there.)
(unraid is quite decent - on slackware ~> its also my daily use for storage on zfs, dockerized media center & ai central, with kvm all at the same time)

 

[Mithril]

hard pass on rhel, last I looked at the license it would make it impossible to have a "free as in beer" version of proxmox. At least if that was the only option, if they want to release rhel as another version more power to them.

My big wish with Proxmox would be a "homelab/SOHO" level license that's "site-license" or close to it, or allow mixed licensed and unlicensed in the same management

 

[a5tra3a]

While no solution is 100% perfect for everyone and sometimes getting issues fixed for a particular install can be a challenge, though the devs from what I have seen are pretty quick to get things fixed and or sorted when it comes to more wide spread issues vs one off installs. I also run Debian as my chosen distro for all my VMs other than pfSense for my edge firewall/router and TrueNAS for 2 storage servers (1 is media and the other is for my personal files).

I just finished setting up an administration terminal for my homelab using an old HP laptop. I installed PVE 8.2.2 and then encrypted the boot drive using native ZFS encryption as well as encrypted the second drive using ZFS as well for VM and other data storage and have that drive unlocking using a key file. I also installed a desktop environment and setup XRDP for remote access on my network from my main workstation.

Proxmox has been my go to for bare-metal installs for a while now. I have a cluster of 7 nodes being used to host various virtual machines and another cluster of 3 nodes for a small Ceph install that I have been using to learn clustered storage.

 

[gea]

Proxmox as SMB server (without a storage VM)

[Übersicht] - napp-it cs, Web-GUI für fast jeden ZFS Server oder Servergruppen

Der K(r)ampf mit der Benutzerverwaltung Ich bin gerade dabei eine Benutzerverwaltung einzubauen mit der man auch eine größere Anzahl Nutzer für einen Fileserver verwalten kann. Schwerpunk ist Free-BSD 14, Linux (Proxmox), Illumos/Solaris und Windows. OSX und TrueNas werden mit der...

www.hardwareluxx.de

You can use Chrome to translate

 

[gea]

ZFS GUI under Proxmox vs Storage VM with GUI

Ich have started top to check RAM and CPU load of my napp-it web-gui under Proxmox (Perl process).
Propably not too different with other ZFS GUIs for Proxmox.

    PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND

1425592 root      20   0   22888  18304   5632 R   1.3   0.2   0:03.46 perl

1425556 root      20   0   17968  11144   9344 S   0.7   0.1   0:02.81 sshd

1428148 root      20   0   11624   5376   3328 R   0.7   0.1   0:00.34 top

With around 1% CPU und 22 K RAM an order of magnitude below a full featured storage VM.
(Virtualized Linux or Solaris ZFS storage VM)

Without a 32Core CPU mit 128 GB RAM a criterion, especially when you only want one or another SAMBA SMB share.

 

[Captain Lukey]

Break the storage out? from ProxMox, I use no storage on proxmox server. 2.5G / 10G NIC hard wired to NAS - NFS with nconnect = mutlistream / or iSCSI. Simple Easy and cost effective. VM get all CPU and DRAM and Storage is offloaded.

 

[oldpenguin]

I'll throw in 2¢ here as a personal opinion - having proxmox handle both *load of vms with ballooning enabled and zfs with *load of storage space is asking for trouble.

Proxmox is a hypervisor manager (with built-in hypervisor). You can add stuff on top of it (courtesy of the beloved||hated debian base) - it'll work but it may bite your rear side when not all variables are accounted for. But I really love having this flexibility.

Trip down the memory lane: anyone here remembering the openvz era as a point of comparison?

 

[mattventura]

ProxMox is nice for this, but I'd probably still go for TrueNAS scale for a single node. If I want a cluster, I'd probably do PVE but with Ceph as the storage.

 

[gb00s]

ProxMox is nice for this, but I'd probably still go for TrueNAS scale for a single node. If I want a cluster, I'd probably do PVE but with Ceph as the storage.

Maybe check out PVE cluster with LinStor gateway for clustered NFS and other solutions. Also LinStor DRBD 'included' in PVE cluster became very promising.